


The Whole Past Theory of Our Lives (We Have To Leave Behind)

by Anonymous



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Birthday Sex, First Time, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, RomComy cheesy trashy lines I'm sorry, accidental angst, implied infidelity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-03
Updated: 2015-09-03
Packaged: 2018-04-18 18:56:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4716833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris and Zach Do The Do For The First Time On Chris's 35th Birthday AU</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Whole Past Theory of Our Lives (We Have To Leave Behind)

It would surprise many and it does surprise Zach when he thinks about it: the very first time he and Chris fuck is on Chris's 35th birthday.

It's a lot of awkward at first. There are kisses landing on strange places: the side of the knees, the bridge of the nose, both of their cheeks at the same time. Chris giggles in the crook of Zach’s armpits before raising his head a little, looking at Zach with a half-smile. "We're a disaster," Zach says, chuckling, nosing the underside of Chris's jaw, his open mouth dragging along the side of Chris's throat.

Chris doesn't say anything, just pushes himself up to look him in the eye, framing his palms flat in both sides of Zach's face before closing his mouth over Zach's own. Zach takes it all: Chris's gripping lips, the viciousness of his teeth. There's are lingering doubts in the form of objection that threatens to come out of Zach's mouth and Chris swipes them all back with a flick of his tongue.

"Maybe so," Chris whispers hoarsely when they separate to breathe, “but the end justifies the means, and all that.” He leans down and drops a kiss on Zach's throat, and then another on his collarbone, and down farther to then lave at his nipple. Chris bites it before sucking it against the soft of his mouth until it peaks impossibly tight and hard against the cold that it ached. Zach aches, and his breathing hitches as Chris continues to drop kisses in the hollow of his ribs, in the dip of his stomach, dipping lower and lower still. Zach closes his eyes, can't watch, is in agony, and he doesn't know if he wants to move it along or contemplate on the fact that _this is happening_. This is _Chris_ , those are Chris's fingers circling around his—

Zach's eyes startle open in time to see Chris lick his hole with his wide, flat, tongue. Zach jerks up helplessly, stabbing the head of his cock to one of Chris's eye.

Chris jumps back, laughing, and Zach pouts a little churlishly, "That is so not funny, Machiavelli—" except then Chris grips him harder and licks a long trail before flicking the top and closing over and sliding down, and the rest of the complaint is forgotten because Chris's suckling lips, his wet, unforgiving mouth, oh god his tongue, swirling in languid strokes—

Zach can feel Chris's teeth grazing over him rhythmically, and Zach's hands are gripping the sheets too tightly, he knows, and Chris just draws him in further, making a pleased groan when Zach moves a hand to grip Chris's hair, hips starting to thrust wildly in Chris's mouth and Chris is letting him and Zach tries hard not to beg for more teeth, more heat, just more—

"Oh god," he says, helplessly. Chris lets go of his cock with a pop and Zach's flops back dejectedly, head spinning over the loss, still trembling and shivering, when Chris is crawling towards Zach, leaning over and straddling him. He catches Zach's mouth again with a quick kiss before he's preparing himself with something he grabbed somewhere. Zach groans from the sight of it, but nothing prepares him for the feeling coming from the base of his being when Chris lifts his hips up before easing himself down on Zach slowly, his breath coming labored in tiny, desperate pants.

Chris stops halfway, his lids heavy and his hands braced on Zach's stomach. A line of drool escapes his glistening mouth that was gaping open while gasping for breath, and Zach stares at it. He wants it, wants to fight to taste it against Chris's tongue which now darts to take it back. Zach pushes his shoulders up and grabs Chris's torso to slam him down and, _oh god_ , he shouts with Chris, before he's grabbing Chris's head again and chasing the taste in Chris's mouth.

His hips starts to thrust up in rhythm, in sync with Chris's rocking hips, bouncing up and down, and it isn’t enough, he can’t get enough. Wants to go faster, harder, deeper, in Chris’s skin, in his veins, and never leave, and thinks there is a palpable a loss to be had in missing something he's never had in the first place.

 

*

 

The first time Zach sees Chris, really sees him, it’s not so much his clever portmanteau that does Zach in, as Chris’s balls of obstinacy, which is frankly disconcerting, and, if Zach is to be honest, will follow him for the rest of their lives.

When he hears the soft thud of approaching footsteps, he'd at least expected a greeting. He's relatively not an unknown – he came here with Hayden, who's hosting by the way, technically got dragged by her along with half of the Heroes cast – and it was a Hollywood party in Beverly Hills. The hobnobbing practically never stops, although the night has dwindled on by then, and he's just stopped by to pay an obligatory homage to the million-dollar copy of the Declaration of Independence, before drifting away himself.

They're practically the only persons in the room, three or so straying in and out the doorway of the dimly-lit room where the Declaration was safely stashed away from the mortals inside while the party largely dwindled outside the old Beverly Post Office building. After a minute of non-introduction, he steals a glance to see the guy to his left, thick eyebrows furrowed in contemplation at the framed parchment, like he's tracking all the changes it had since 1776, hands folded in his back like he's hiding his playing cards from the table.

"So, man," Zach says, eventually breaking the silence. "Are you with the bride or the groom?"

The guy is surprised, like he hadn’t counted on Zach speaking at all. He looks at Zach quizzically with blue eyes that looked entirely surreal in the reddish hue of the overhead lights.

"Are you with the politics side of this event or are you from the Hollywood side?" Zach asks, genially. 

The guy smiles as he returns his gaze back down. "What makes you think I'm not from catering?"

"Well," Zach says, "aside from the fact that you're totally in the handsome business?" He laughs lightly. "All the waiters around here are actors, didn't you know? That's what they tell me anyway. No shame though, we are but warriors for the working day." He offers a hand. "I'm Zach, Quinto."

"Chris Pine," he says, shaking with a firm hand.”

"So, waiter huh?"

"Nah," Chris says, grinning. "I forgot the SAG card at home but I do act."

Zach chuckles. "Oh good, you had me worried for my sweeping generalizations for a moment there."

A pause. "I uh, I've seen you around, actually." Chris is completely facing him now, right hand fiddling with a glass of red wine but his eyes are steady on Zach's face. "You train with Mike, yeah?"

"Yeah, you know him?"

"He's a friend, but I do train with him too."

Zach nods, trying to remember having seen Chris sweating in Mike's makeshift gym in his kitchen. There isn't exactly a deficiency of blue-eyed studs in the neighborhood. "He's a friend of mine, but it's only since I needed to gain some pounds for a role that I started training with him.”

"I think I've heard about that. Was this for Trek?"

"Yeah,” Zach says, guessing where their conversation is headed. “Did you— “

"I did,” Chris says. “I have a call back, on Monday, actually."

There is an ugly second that Zach thinks people will only approach him now because they want something from him and that will be for as long as Trek shall live, but oh god, he’s not above saying he will help Chris if it gets him to bed with his with this beautiful, adorable man in front of him, with his snug white shirt with a coat slapped on like he’s making an effort to be socially presentable but not rea— 

“Look,” Chris blurts out, swiftly undercutting Zach’s bleak train of thought. “I told Mike about the call back, and he told me you got cast, but it’s all over the news, anyway, apparently, but I don’t watch the news so… but I have seen you at Mike’s, and I thought we young and creative types should help each other out, so I thought I’d give it a shot and ask you to read with me.”

Zach pauses. His mind draws a blank. “You wound me. And here I thought you were interested when you started talking to me,” he says in a clipped voice. Chris’s eyes widen comically, which is just as attractive, and he starts to backtrack before Zach takes pity on him. “Nah, I’m just pulling your leg,” he says, laughing, giving him a nice and friendly three-pat in the back. 

“Advertent innuendos aside,” Zach adds, “I thought you were out for more serious roles.”

“Ah! So you do know of me,” Chris says, gleefully.

“I watched Princess Diaries when I was babysitting a friend's kid,” he says, grudgingly, only just remembering where he saw Chris first. “And also, Mike may have mentioned you. Repeatedly.”

“Well you know, there’s no way to go but—” Chris says, pointing a finger upwards. “And eventually, it’s not the years, it’s the mileage. Honey,” he adds, with a quirked eyebrow and a wicked smirk, and it takes Zach a moment before it sinks in that they’ve breached past questionably polite territory.

“Aside from the Bush administration? That’s… a surprisingly healthy way to look at things, actually,” Zach says, chuckling.

"Oh I don’t know about that, Zach. I don't only benchpress in my spare time, but I am not young enough to know everything," Chris says with a gleam in his eye, as if he just won a game Zach didn't know they were playing. And this, he thinks, is the first time Zach sees Chris. “Damn, that’s a—“ He pauses, counting with his fingers, “triple negative. _Unreal_ ,” he says laughing.

That night, he agrees to see Chris over the weekend to read with him for the Kirk role, but Zach remembers this memory a decade later as the night he sees Chris laughing for the first time, seeing him really laughing: his eyes squinting, corners crinkling, his head throws back in glee. His pink lips stretch in suspense, revealing his canines in a row of even teeth, letting out barks laughter that seemed to brew all the way from his stomach and scrambles as they pass through his throat. It's all very sensual, somehow, he thinks.

Zach will wonder if perhaps, the reason why he's relented on the idea of wanting Chris overtime is because he has studied Chris instead, like a well-worn book, and imitated parts of him to life.

 

*

 

"You know what I want?" Chris says, after a deep drag of his cigarette. "I want ramen."

Zach has heard what Chris wants for the better part of a decade — a role, a cookie, a fuck — almost nothing surprises him anymore. They're sitting in the VIP section at a local gay scene – nothing wild tonight, just a couple of DJs in the hosue and remixed 90s pop music for the night. They’re even at a separate indoor patio, a space away from the main room with its own service bar. They'd come there after dinner, after the Armani people dropped by and left early and the Trek crew that were present had gone home. Alone again, they are, naturally, except for Simon who's wandered off somewhere talking on his phone.

"The one from the quaint little noodle bar back home? The one in Sunset Boulevard. Man, I woke up this morning and I knew I wanted some of this—I don't even remember the flavor, but it was bland, thin, chicken I think, very straightforward — but I just knew I wanted some." Chris glugs the beer straight from the bottle, dangling his point in suspense. Very English Major material. "I don't even remember liking it, at the time."

Zach just looks at Chris and takes a drag at the cigarette between his fingers. Ten years with Chris, and he knows how to wait for Chris' point.

"My point is," Chris says, "I didn't get the ramen. There was no ramen in the restaurant, and I sure as hell am not going to get it here." 

"Woe is you," Zach says, blowing him a breath of smoke. 

Chris looks at him steadily, it’s a bit unnerving, before he shakes his head. "Well, at the very least, I liked the carpaccio, thanks for the rec by the way. I didn't know Yelp does Canadian restaurants."

"I didn't get it from Yelp, you ass."

Chris just smiles, in that way that says, that's a softball, and swallows a gulp of his beer, then lets out a tongue in disgust. “Zaaach,” he laments, slurring his voice “when did I get so bourgeois,” and orders some tequila shots for them both.

Sometimes, he forgets it's like this with Chris. They aren't the star-crossed tragic lovers some people with hyperactive imaginations make them out to be, and that's fine with Zach. He's a well-adjusted adult, he's an autonomous, living, breathing person, and it took hard fucking work to get him to where he is, damn it, that it makes him want to swear even though he doesn't, not normally. Chris does that to him, though. Makes him want to re-evaluate himself and all of his decisions. It's not the conversational quirks, per se, not the variations or repetitions of every existential thing they’ve done together or apart. He has a tunnel vision when it comes to Chris, like everything that ever matters right now is what Chris thinks, how Chris feels, is Chris happy enough to laugh that first laugh all over again. 

Chris is Chris — the guy who once crashed in his place and borrowed his underwear three nights in a row because he was hiding from the paps — but when it's like this between them, he notices the little lapses, and double-checks himself because for both of them, everything holds quite differently. 

"This is it," Zach says, when they're back at the hotel and he's handing back Chris's key card, because that's how they roll now. From too many drunken nights, key cards in Chris's pockets isn't wise, and Zach always had to be the responsible one, that in the end, it was his greatest lesson in self-restraint. Zach wants to say something meaningful before he leaves, have what people would think as words of wisdom to end the night. An It's Been Nice to Be Just The Two of Us Again, but then again, _This Is How It Always Starts, So I'm Just Going To Go_. So he settles at "Happy birthday, Chris," coming out lamely as it sounded in his head, but he gave a fierce hug, and everything balances out.

He leans back, loosening his arms but for a long minute, Chris doesn't let go. He can feel Chris licking his lips from beside his right ear, and whispers, "Zach, I—"

Zach jumps back in surprise, his sleeves constrained in Chris’s bunched fingers before Chris lets him go, eyes trying furtively to not look in his general direction. "Yeah, I guess I— Yeah, good night. Thanks again," he says, before turning towards his door shutting himself in.

 

*

 

They had talked about it before, once upon a time.  
Chris has been in a long term relationship that he actually wanted to make an effort for and for Chris, that's a rare enough thing, Chris tells him. Zach is a consummate professional on the job that will define his entire life, and is a decent friend. 

But it's easy to slip with Chris. Chris is coquettish and game, and warm. There's this thing he does, in which he drifts mid-conversation. His eyes daze off and he's nodding, and Zach thinks he can get away with saying something raunchy, and Chris won't be able to catch it, but he tries it, several times, and Zach sees the moment his eyes narrow down to the point and call him out on his shit, and Zach laughs and loves it when Chris does that, most of the time. Which brings them to the present conversation.

"There's a demarcating line, see," Chris says emphatically, his hands demonstrating the line he's so insistent on making. "This, here, screams, _it's all fun and games, but I'm holding out for serious business_ ," he says, pointing to one side, and then pointing to the other. "This one screams _I'm there already_."

"How eloquent." 

"Sure," Chris says, gulping his beer. "I can see your eyebrow of disapproval, but believe me, it's all in the intent."

"That is such a straight thing to say, Chris. I think you out-straighted yourself there." Zach wonders for a second why the most vulgar conversations gets left out when it's only the two of them left. "No, I get your point, I do, but it's a very problematic frame of mind. Instead of just doing what feels good, you're obsessed with these... labels. I have news for you, though, buddy. No one's tracking your progress except you."

"Yeah, I am, I do," Chris admits. "On one hand, I don't want to give the wrong impression."

"That relies on how discerning your partners are."

"Oh they _are_ ," he says, waggling his eyebrows, and Zach is partly sure Chris just made eyes with the blonde waitress who just walked past behind his back.

"Oh Really? I'm surprised they aren't high school students. Since you're counting bases and all."

"Fuck you," Chris says, laughing.

"I call em what I see 'em, Pine," he says. What are you fighting for here, Zach wants to ask. "Well I think that's just silly," he says instead. " I, for one, has had a lot of encounters that end with my come in their mouth or me just squeezing the hell out of them with every intention of denominating that as full-blown sex." His voice has come to a low near-whisper and he feels silly for having the conversation turned him into a shy teenager talking about illicit things, and he's not, but he finds Chris has a way of making him feel like one, most of the time. "If I can suck a guy's penis without getting attached, you can put the penis in your vagina without getting attached. The pure act of sexual play does not magically transform you into needing a relationship with the person."

If he imagines it, he'll say he can see Chris’s eyes dilating, his breath hitching, with a slow blush creeping to his face. Or maybe it's just wishful thinking. Or, or, or. Zach has been trying to incorporate that in his life: always, _always_ give the benefit of the doubt and not pounce on your friend. As it is, Chris just pauses for an eternity before answering. "You're a fucking tease," Chris says, laughing lightly, punches his arm and goes on getting smashed. Zach remembers walking Chris back to the hotel that night. He fishes out the key card in Chris's back pocket and deposits him on the bed, going back to lay down in his bed on the next hotel room, staring at the ceiling for a very long time.

It’s a many months later when Chris blows him for the first time. There are hot and frantic mouths and tongue and hands, and do it in their hotel rooms, in the cubicles in a bar, in Zach’s apartments, but there is nothing else there. There’s no story here, is the sign that it’s saying, even to Zach. Everytime Chris reaches for his groin and looks at him with unfathomable heat and determination, Zach makes it a ritual to remember that single conversation they had every single time.

But at the present, he knows nothing. Given a choice of creative implications and straight realities, he'll always choose the more solid ones that are healthier for his sanity.

"You're just an asshole," Zach says, without bite.

"You're the asshole," Chris says.

"I hate you."

"You love me," Chris says, grinning.

 

*

 

The best and worst thing about Chris is his ability to affect Zach so much.

Zach knows this, and yet he’s unable to prevent the restlessness that attacks him when he’s back in the room he’s occupying by himself. He raises his fists and knocks on Chris’s door angrily, but not immediately. Zach is fuming mad now, a byproduct of self-effacing arguments and spontaneous combustion at having Chris. He's pacing the floor, knocks again some more. When Chris opens the door, with a "What do you wa—” Zach cuts him off and pushes inside Chris's room.

"Why would you do that?" Zach snarls, when they’re both inside. 

"Wha—?" 

Zach glares at him, folds his arms to his chest, bracing himself for battle. “What the ever-loving fuck, Chris?” 

"Hey, I get it, okay," Chris snarls, scrubbing his eyes with both hands before raking them in his hair. "You don't want anything to do with me, that's fine."

"You cruel, selfish, motherfucker," Zach says, voice low and dangerous, and he'll apologize later, saying he says it more to hurt Chris but if he's really honest with himself, it's from the strain he’s kept from all the times he thought of asserting himself and but still holding back because they’d rather dip in and out of each other’s lives without really defining what they are. 

“I am,” Chris says, before turning back to where his bedroom is. “You can go.” Chris’s shoulders slump, defeated, like how he has looked like, for the past months, and Zach would have forgotten how his face can light up if not for how he lit up tonight, for him, and _oh_ —

"Chris," he says, following him and moving to kneel before the bed. He clutches Chris's knee with both hands before grabbing his wrists. Chris closes his eyes to block out Zach, maybe, and Zach would laugh if his life didn't depend on it, but it does, so he touches his forehead to Chris and whispers instead. "Chris."

“What do you want from me?” Chris whispers.

"I'm sorry I couldn't do it anymore. I can't, I felt—" Zach's chest is heaving under the weight of never having to say anything, and now, as he's saying it, it becomes real, whereas if he doesn't, he can pretend that it's some irrelevant part of himself that he has a choice over.

"No, no, no," Chris says. "You don't have to be sorry. It's my fault, really. I thought you knew." Chris pulls himself away. "I have loved you, so fucking much, in the only way I know how, I—” Chris exhales, and he looks deflated, but Zach’s heart is hammering now, like a part of him has only just come alive. “I didn’t want you in my history of doomed romances, and now I’m fucking it all over again. You’ve always known I have shitty timing, I know, but I couldn’t go on—“

It’s not the words that Zach needs, not precisely. It’s probably the way Chris says it, not with conviction but with desperation. A reflection of his own, Zach thinks, no matter how hard he disregards it. Mapping the geographical overlay of their lives and relationships takes too much effort for shit whether it’s justified that he stops Chris’s ramblings with a kiss, but he does anyway.

 

*

 

The life of the theater is a solitary route, especially after coming home from enthusiastic applause to the quiet of his apartment with only Noah to come home to. Tonight, he comes home and sees Chris curled on his couch with his shoes still on. Zach removes his own sneakers, places his cap on the nearby shelf and pads softly to sit on the couch, in the hollow space beside Chris's stomach, slumps there quietly for a while. Somehow, Chris being there, just softly snoring creates a nuance in his routine. Zach hasn’t quite pinpointed his feelings about it, yet. 

"Hey," Chris says, voice hoarse, when he wakes up.

"Hey."

"Come here," he says, snaking his arm under Zach's shirt, tugging him lightly down so they're lying sideways on the couch. Zach lay his head down Chris’s arm, so that feels the soft whistle of Chris's breath on the nape of Zach's neck. "How was the show?"

"It's alright," Zach says. “Angharad was there on the audience tonight. Janin? From Paramount, from the London premiere? Anyway, she came up to me after the show. There were flowers involved, it was a bit embarrassing.” Zach tries to shift his head to see if Chris recognizes the name, but he couldn’t, tucked as he is in their aligned torsos and tangled legs. It's uncomfortable, really. When Zach bought the couch, he really didn't envision two grown ass men snuggling in it; that was what beds are for. But the couch is hardly a safe zone now if they're just going to trample in on their boundaries like this. "What time did you get in?" he asks instead.

"Came here directly at around 9," Chris says, his thumb rubbing soothing circles on Zach's stomach. "I wish I'd been there," he says, after a while, and _you could have been_ , Zach thinks, but it's not up for discussion, then it'll have to be a thing, and Zach doesn't want to, not when he can feel Chris's heart calmly thumping at the back of his spine, and it isn't really supposed to be like this, after not talking for months at a time, but it's just the way it is. 

Zach is drifting off. He’s tired, so very, and his voice needs the reprieve of not talking for a few hours at least. He hears Chris telling him, "Hey Zach," and he can only mumble a confirmation that he heard. "You should buy a bigger apartment, and then a bigger couch, that we’ll fit in better next time."

Zach opens his eyes, hours later, and he has the beginnings of a neck cramp. But Chris is still sleeping, holding him, and he can't really force himself to move, even if he wanted to.

 

*

 

" _Come on, come on, come on_ ," Chris says, flipping himself over on his elbows and knees, propping his ass higher before widening his stance further. Zach is there, kissing his back, biting a little on the base of his spine, slick with sweat and lube and come. Chris groans into his pillow.

"I didn't- unh. _Zach_ ", he whimpers. I've wanted you for so long, wanted you in me, _god_."

"Baby, you’re so good for me," Zach purrs, grabbing Chris's thigh apart and shoving himself in again in a smooth lunge, and they groan in unison. Zach grips Chris’s thighs, his hips starting to move fast in an instant, and there’s nothing else to say because he has fallen so long ago in such a final, definite way. 

 

*

 

"Well, he has this serious demeanor going on, but I don't think he'll honestly take any offense." Zach says. They're walking along a Vancity beach while working out the details of the pranking they're going to give Justin later as a sort of welcome to the Enterprise crew. He eyes Miles who’s talking on the phone with his agent, a new campaign is what it sounds like, looking gorgeously as if he’s on an ad for long distance calls, if that makes sense. Sofia met and stayed with a friend along the walk and John, on the other hand, scooted away to have his photo taken with some fans, because he thinks just the act offends Chris's sensibilities. He might not be wrong. "It'll be awesome."

He doesn’t ask for Chris’s verdict, although he always has given it. Chris matters in his life, but Zach is in a happy place right now, where what matters is right here right now, and what could have beens doesn't actually account to anything. 

"He is, Zach," Chris says, chin up, looking at the sky. "He's… he's okay."

They aren't talking about Justin, Zach knows, not anymore. Out of nowhere, he's choking up with feelings he's sort of forgotten welling up is throat, and the beach is the wrong place to do that, and whose idea is it (it was Simon’s) to walk the beach with your significant other and another who you had a long-standing sort-of affair-but-not-really, anyway. Cho is a shitty referee. "Come on, you goof," Zach says, and drags Chris along to walk, squeezing his arm, rescuing them both from disaster.

 

*

 

Zach stills his hips to bow over Chris, slipping his hands under Chris's waist to pull him back, pressed to his chest. Zach licks the trail of sweat in Chris's neck, can taste his pulse throbbing in his temple. Chris's head drops back against his shoulder while Zach's hands skim down Chris's chest, finding Chris's cock, wet and dripping, and he holds it firmly and reverently. Chris gasps, groans, before seeking him again in a kiss, and their tongues taste of salt thrusting in and out of each other’s mouth as Zach jerks him wildly, swallowing Chris’s desperate shallow breaths.

Chris's head lolls forward again, as Zach thrusts up and pulls Chris back to his lap again and again, and Zach honest to goodness wants a mirror right in front of them right now, like in sleazy motels in the movies, because it still feels surreal. He will die to see that face, those slutty eyes and lips and mouth he's loved for so long without saying, right in time to see Chris come with a shout, with Zach's cock buried in his ass, Chris's come drizzling down his hands. Zach can’t feel guilty, or angry, and after, when he’s calm and spent and it’s Chris who comes to him, bending low, burying his hands in Zach’s hair, smoothing it back, before kissing him and kissing him, Zach moves with him, lets him in. 

But now, as Chris comes apart, Chris takes Zach’s hands and puts them and his mouth, craning his neck to look back at Zach before he licks and sucks himself off Zach’s fingers, Zach comes hard, and he thinks he's never going to forget it now, now that he knows what it's like. Not that he’s ever going to stop wanting, either way.

 

*

 

When Chris wakes up, his lids creak open one millimeter at a time. That is how it has always been. One time, before all the happyandhurt happened - and that's just how Zach is going to think about it, because he was the happiest but also at his worst – during the first Trek movie, Chris napped on his trailer, and that's when he first saw him blossoming. There were no eyelashes that fluttered, just a steady dawning of reality reflected in his clear blue eyes. Zach was going to break silence, until he decides not to, because he didn't have the heart. He felt privileged to just see it.

When Chris comes to, Zach has watched him unfold, tucking back the strands of his long-ish Kirk hair that obscures his forehead to his eyes. There's a moment when Chris blinks back, closes his eyes before nuzzling Zach's neck. 

"Do you remember when we first met?”

"Which one?" Chris says, in his grumbly morning voice.

Zach willfully stubs Chris's leg with his toe in reply.

"Hmm," Chris says, "I remember you being a condescending schmuck."

"Not at Mike's," Zach says. "At the Declaration of Independence thing."

"Yeah, well you were always a schmuck when you weren’t talking to me. So?"

"You said something to me," Zach says.

"Yeah I did, didn't I?"

Zach pinches Chris’s nipple.

"Ow," Chris whined. "There's something seriously wrong with you, you know that—"

"You said something about age, and knowing," Zach says, patiently.

A pause. "Fuck if I can remember Zach, it's, oh yeah, I think that's Wilde, or not. The Indiana Jones one?"

Zach hums. Chris is Chris, he thinks, so he just says, "Happy birthday, Chris," softly, and kisses him on his cheeks.

Chris looks at him doubtfully. "Do you— Are you—" Chris burrows his head in Zach's neck, before speaking again, carefully, "I can go on, Zach, I can, for —"

"Nope, " Zach says, closing his eyes as well. He holds him tighter, kisses Chris's cheek again and again because he can't stop. "Not this time."

**Author's Note:**

> Title is stolen and paraphrased from a [Whitman poem](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/179222). Mike the trainer is from rainbowstrlght's awesome [first time Stalker!Chris fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/128221).
> 
> All feedback will be much appreciated! uwu


End file.
